Providers wary of care costs toolkit

A national costing tool for residential services for people with learning difficulties is being developed by the government to alleviate spending pressures.

The Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP) has asked providers of learning difficulties services to test out the tool.

But the Association for Real Change, an umbrella group for more than 400 learning difficulties providers, warned that regional variations in wages and property costs would make it difficult to enforce the toolkit nationally.

James Churchill, chief executive of ARC, said providers were also concerned that the national minimum wage was used as a benchmark wage in the tool. He added: “If this is cynically used by purchasers to drive down costs and standards of staffing it will spell disaster for the sector.”

Connect with us

Topics

More information

Our website uses cookies, which are small text files that are widely used in order to make websites work more effectively. To continue using our website and consent to the use of cookies, click click 'Continue'. Find out more.